The school will hold their annual Christmas Assembly Concert at 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, but there won’t be a crowded gym with parents shoulder to shoulder, kids in the back waiting to go on stage, and the always-fun songs and performances.
Instead, it will all be condensed into a neat, 35-minute-or-so video that will feature dancing and other performances from the school’s six classes and their staff.
The project is the brainchild of Empire student support teacher Dana Ansell, who has taken video of each class doing their thing and is compiling it all into the show, which will be streamed to classrooms and to parents on Zoom on Thursday afternoon.
“We decided to have the kids perform on a stage in our gym and the kids did a dance to a song since we aren’t allowed singing,” she explained.
“Then there are our band performances, that ended up being cute, since we couldn’t play our instruments,” Ansell added. “So we have something like ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, and they’re acting like they’re playing it, but they don’t have their mouthpieces on and they’re wearing their masks. Cute little things like that to give parents something to watch and see their kid, something to celebrate because it’s been a long haul.”
Ansell recorded each class last Friday and was finalizing the whole production on Wednesday afternoon, cobbling together all the performances along with bits and pieces including candid photos, quotes and some staff antics.
It followed a similar format to what Empire School did for Remembrance Day, where a video production had students following a video and even laying wreaths at a cenotaph at the school entrance.
The whole thing will debut to the school at the aforementioned 2 p.m. Thursday, with parents able to join in and watch at the same time as the students through Zoom.
The plan is to post the video to Facebook afterwards in order to give parents who couldn’t watch a chance to see the Christmas concert, too.
All in all, it’s a chance for some holiday fun in a time when there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had.
“”Totally,” Ansell said. “And every kid loves seeing themselves, plus we won’t all have to gather and sit in a hot gymnasium and look over people’s heads to see their kid for the two minutes they’re on. They can see them on the screen right there, and there won’t transitions between classes and stuff like that… It’ll hopefully be a seamless 35 minutes and everyone will enjoy the show!”
